"Jobs called Android a 'stolen product', but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. The iPhone didn't emerge fully formed from Jobs's head. Rather, it represented the culmination of incremental innovation over decades - much of which occurred outside of Cupertino." Nothing particularly new in there for regular OSNews readers, but still handy to have it in one place.

Oh absolutely. It's definitely a "stolen product" by the standards that Jobs laid out. I have always maintained that Apple is an evolutionary and, in many cases, creatively reactionary company. There is very little in terms of features or functionality or even design paradigms that come out of Cupertino that are revolutionary; the level of polish is, however, revolutionary, time and time again.

I'm just trying to be objective--at least, by my own principles, which I think most people here would disagree with. Few on OSNews would agree, I believe, that "level of polish" is something that can be defined as "revolutionary", which is perfectly fine. But when people start bashing Apple left and right for not being innovative because they took this and that design paradigm from somewhere else, they totally miss the point of why other people call the company innovative.

My comments was more directed at above commenters who decided to turn this into a tribunal judging Apple's innovativeness, a fracas stemming from a misunderstanding of the word "innovative" which I gladly joined in :-)

P.S.: To be clear, I agree with everything the article says; but as evidence of my point, take a look at what it has to say about the slide to unlock feature. Click on the YouTube link and watch the feature in action on that older phone. There is really no comparison whatsoever in terms of how polished the feature is on that phone and on the iPhone. Is Apple's feature stolen? Of course. Is Apple's implementation revolutionary and innovative because of how polished it is? Yes.

Apple generates polarised views. As you quite rightly point out, Apple has created lots of innovative products and features, yet others see them as being evolutionary or derivative.

However my guess is this polarisation is intentionally generated by Apple. Denying Apple’s innovation is primarily a response to the way Apple (and some Apple users) portray the nature of Apple's innovation.

Apple has a tendency to emphasize how innovative its products are without acknowledging the innovation of others. In fact, it even goes further to dismiss others' innovation (see e.g. the "stolen product" claim). This is particularly dangerous if your primary means of innovation is through something as intangible as polish (although I’d personally say there’s more to Apple than that).

The natural response to this is to play down Apple's innovation, since it's the only way to restore perspective. In my view, the consequence is that both sides end up in implausible positions.